Shortly after I wrote the entry below about the Dog Party at Dog Mountain, I ran across this quote which I've seen before but had not remembered for a long time. As a dog owner, it's one of my favorites:

"We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us." - Maurice Maeterlinck

Maeterlinck was a Belgian poet, playright, and Nobel Prize winner who lived 1862 to 1949.